


everything in its season

by novembersmith



Category: Uprooted - Naomi Novik
Genre: Body Horror, Character Study, F/F, Pining, ahem, alternate POV, they're lesbians harold
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 14:05:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17045120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novembersmith/pseuds/novembersmith
Summary: Kasia had wanted to be stronger for Agnieszka, but not like this.





	everything in its season

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ViolentFlowers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViolentFlowers/gifts).



> Warnings for some canon typical body-horror!

When the walker came, Kasia felt, before anything else, even fear, just – so stupid. Everyone knew to look for walkers by the river, how to spot the false-wood shape of them. This one even stood out silvery pale against the duller, softer browns of the familiar winter aspen and linden. 

But she hadn’t been looking, and so she was going to die. She was so _stupid_ , to have thought she could ever have been of use to Agnieszka. Her, a simple village girl, and Agnieszka—well. Were there words for her? Kasia hadn’t found them yet, and now she never would.

For a moment, though, hope flashed hot through Kasia’s veins—she had her father’s axe, after all, slung across her back and freshly sharpened. She was strong, stronger now than she’d ever been after all these weeks cutting wood, after carrying it – after months spent finding things, anything at all, that she could do away from her house. There were so many who needed hands, and Kasia had found she had them.

And though the walker had her cornered against the river, she didn’t need more than slim opening to get free – Kasia was quick enough, if she could strike a hard enough blow—maybe she wouldn’t have to plunge herself into the river to die a clean death. Maybe she might _live_ , if she could be fast enough. 

But no. Impossibly, something moved out of the corner of her eye, even as she hefted the now-familiar, comforting weight of the axe. There was more than one walker. Two more of them moved towards her now, coming up on either side from the frozen mud of the river’s bank. 

Stupid Kasia. Stupid, _stupid_ , Kasia, lost in dreaming about that night. About Agnieszka’s wild bright eyes, and about how together they had held off the Wood-wolves, like something out of a fairy tale. Agnieszka had needed her, despite all of her magic and fineness, had needed someone to shove and pull and shield her. Kasia, cast out of the story of her own life, had found somewhere maybe, if she tried, where she could make a place for herself after all, one that felt good and right. Where, if she could admit it, she’d always wanted more than anything else, to be: at Agnieszka’s side, pacing alongside her carefully, snarling at anyone who would mock her, or trip her, or take advantage of her sweetness.

But Agnieszka was a witch, now, and Kasia was just a stupid girl, too busy day-dreaming of lady knights and wizards, of fairy tales, to notice the new thickness of flotsam by the river bank. And so she was going to die, and she would never hear Agnieszka’s laugh, or listen to her sing again.

It made her angry. She was angry a lot, lately. At least there was this solace - here, now, she had something concrete to _do_ about it.

“It’s not even your season,” she said to the walker facing her. It stared at her with hollow rotted dark spaces for eyes, then the stalk of its head cocked with a crackle, almost as though it heard her. 

For there to be three of them… Three walkers, in dead of winter. Unheard of. It was impossible, but here they were.

The realization hit her almost harder than the knowledge of her own impending death. No. _They came for me_. Not just any careless, idiot girl, but me. It wasn’t chance she had stumbled upon them. 

They had been sent. 

This was to hurt Nieshka. This _would_ hurt Nieshka, Kasia knew it the way she knew the broken-winged thrashing of her own heart in her throat. She would be the one that broke Nieshka’s heart. 

All these thoughts pulsed through her in the space between breaths, and then they were already on top of her.

Kasia couldn’t bear it. Even as she was caught from behind, knowing it was hopeless, she made herself swing the axe and felt a pointless thrill of pride when she saw several limbs fall to the snow. She even managed, in pushing them back a few seconds with her blade, to fling herself into the water. She struggled forward in awkward, graceless lunges, until she was chest deep, the current tearing at her clothes urgently, like a mother pulling her child away, away from the fire to safety.

But it was only a few seconds of freedom she’d won with her blade, and though the walkers did not touch the water themselves, their long spindly limbs caught her up again by the hair, by her coat. The cold made her slow. They pulled her from the water. They took her into the air, and made their way with her towards the Wood, step by creaking step.

Their hands on her pressed through the thick trousers and coat, into her hard-won muscle and right down to the bone. When she twisted instinctively, fighting the grip, the strong green wool of her father’s coat ripped beneath their fingers first, then as she kept thrashing, it was her skin to tear next, in a hot red rush, and then finally she heard the crackle of one of her wrists giving beneath the clutching wood, until all she could hear were her own screams. 

Then came what she assumed would be the last small mercy of her life: the sight of her mother’s face appearing over the crest of the hill, blank with shock for a moment, then twisting in agonized understanding.

At least Wensa would know, now, what happened to her daughter. Would be ready, if a monster bearing Kasia’s face strolled back out of the wood. It was enough of a relief that Kasia went limp, her bedraggled, bleeding body hanging from the walkers like something left behind by a butcher’s bird.

The walkers were wintery brown, but her axe had drawn startlingly green sap that dripped sticky and cold onto her skin, colder somehow than the wet wool freezing to her skin. She thought, without much hope, that the cold might kill her before they got much further. It couldn’t be much further. The morning sky was a heartlessly beautiful blue, and Kasia thought almost, that she was done fighting until that blue was abruptly scattered by a lacing of black branches. 

Then she found herself screaming again, hoarse and high, as pathetic as a pig being badly slaughtered. Break your neck, quick, she thought somewhere in the pain and panic and sudden sick scent of overturned loam, but the walkers had her steady now – her movements were limited to short, sharp little jerks in their grips. Her head was locked in place, staring up at the winking of blue between the branches. 

Her screams died to panting, and she realized, in shock, she could hear in the winter wood the distant cawing of some bird. Things lived here. She’d known it, but hearing it, somehow, was awful beyond what she’d imagined. Above her, in the thickening branches, there was a nest, as monstrous as a gall and swollen with burgeoning pestilence, and she retched thin bile as they passed it, weeping.

Worse beyond everything else, under the rustle of the walkers through the leaf litter, over the trickle of unseen water, inside the sound of small woodland terrors wandering through the underbrush, was the bone-deep thrum of the Wood itself. She knew it, had always known it – the sweet scent of rot, glutted with satisfaction, clotted with vicious glee that had lurked at the bounds of her little valley, and that was now sinking into her with every breath.

So this is my part in the story, she thought distantly, somewhere beneath the screaming sound of her own voice. I will find out what we’ve always wondered, what happens to those taken by the walkers. What hollows them out and sends them home. Her thoughts kept coming slowly, glassy with panic, and shattered into piercing shards that lanced her heart. Her mother had spent so many years coaching her to bravery, testing her in a thousand small ways, but now she knew she had never truly understood what it was to feel fear. To be hopeless. 

When the black branches above her abruptly gave away to sky, the false hope was sickening – she nearly passed out of it. A tree had fallen; the walkers carried her over it, and into the clearing.

We have your love, Kasia thought she heard a tree sneer to the wind blowing through the openings. All those long years ago Kasia had imagined the familiar oaks and birch might really been whispering to Agnieszka, back when they were pink-cheeked toddlers together, but not like this. No, not like this.

Agnieszka, Nieshka. They would tell her, the trees and the wind. She would know, Kasia despaired, and found the strength for a last attempt to break free, to run, or find some weapon. It gained her only a few inches of slack, and then she was on her knees and hands, her left wrist an agony of splintered bone, but free—and then she saw them.

There were more than three walkers hemming her in. There were nine, now, more than enough to move her without any effort where they wanted her to go. And before them in the clearing was - a young tree. The horror of it. Barely a sapling, leaves spring green despite the frost dusting them. It was beautiful. It was beautiful, and that was the worst part of it.

They were pulling her towards it.

Kasia’s mind was a spindrift of thoughts tossed about in a panic. She fought because she could, and so she had to, even if it didn’t matter. They pressed her in against the bark, her back to the trunk, and so she could not see it. She could feel each creeping inch of it encasing her, binding her. Above her was the open sky. As the bark closed over her open eyes, her screaming mouth, she mouthed a prayer to that sliver of blue space, far above: please, please let me die here.

The worst was, as she drew in her last breath - she knew, she knew, she knew: she would not die. And Agnieska would come.

And then, for a long eternity, all she saw was green. 

She crawled forward into the branches, not sure why but sure she _must move_ , couldn’t stay still, even as arm crackled in agony up. For a time, the pain was clean and simple, but it dulled eventually into something more distant, until she’d forgotten it entirely.

Nothing should be green now. It wasn’t summer, was it? It was winter, this was winter, the season of solace when the Wood was blanketed in the brief balm of of snow. But there was no snow here, nothing white, nothing bright. Just green. 

It took Kasia a long time to remember the river, the walkers. Agnieszka. She was not sure how long, and was too frightened to think about that for more than a few staggering moments. She didn’t know how to measure time in this place in anything else – the slow, determined, pointless movement of her body.

Somewhere else, it was still winter. Somewhere, Agnieszka was learning about Kasia – or worse, maybe was already faced with her smiling, empty face. No. Don’t think of that. It’s bad enough, just _move_.

Here, she fought to breathe in air choked with humid heat. Here, small bloated insects found her exposed skin, her bleeding knuckles. Her mother had tried to teach her not to fear insects, merciless when seven-year-old Kasia had cried as she placed a squirming mass of caterpillars into her cupped palms.

The Wood was merciless, too, as tears leaked down Kasia’s cheeks. There was nothing left to her but to move, or lay down. This was the last choice she had left to her. What would happen if she stopped? She was so tired. Not even your mother wanted you; lie down, and let the maggots have you. Why not.

But it hadn’t been her mother who kept her moving, back before the Wood. She moved – for – who was she moving for?

Everything was green - even, faintly, her own blood, murky and more brown than red. She almost forgot there were other colors, except for suddenly, there was a breath of wind that stirred the branches, showed a bright flash of sky. Blue. She’d forgotten the color blue. It was enough of a shock that it shook her free of the lassitude for a moment, just a moment, and she lunged. Then there was a knee beneath her. Another whisper of breeze, not enough to push aside the branches covering the sky, but enough that she pulled herself to her feet. 

She was up. 

Why, the insects droned, you’ve nowhere to go. But if they wanted her – if the Wood wanted her to lay down, then she wouldn’t. It might be a trick, of course – but she had no heart to puzzle out the truth of that. She could move. She would.

The wind blew seldom, but when it did, she tried to breathe deep and _think_. How had she gotten here? The walkers. Had she escaped the tree? Was she dead? Perhaps this was the hell the priests sometimes spoke of. But no, that seemed – unlikely. Why was she still moving, when she could lay down, and rest? There was nothing she could do. 

But she could move. She could do that, she could still do that, and so she would. She wouldn’t stop, couldn’t. And suddenly, amidst the thick, choking air, there was a sharp scent of smoke cutting through, and Kasia lifted her head.

She had a name. Kasia. She had – she knew, another name, there was another name that mattered, and she breathed it in with the harsh, tarry smoke.

Nieshka. How could she have forgotten Agniezska?

Nieshka would never give up, not as long as Kasia was living – that was what had kept her moving, even when she’d forgotten why. Agnieszka had found her, and now the Wood burned around them. Kasia kept reaching forward, stumbling on, until she could see Nieshka’s warm brown eyes through the smoke, brighter than summer, brighter than the sun, looking right into her, and all around her, piercing the shadows of the Wood, was the light.

And for the first time, Kasia stopped moving. 

Oh, oh. There was nothing new in the light to see, truly. The jealousy was easier to push past, for both of them, bitter as it was, but she’d never wanted ill for Agnieskza, hadn’t even ever truly been surprised when she was chosen. Of course a wizard would have been able to choose the worthy one, between the two of them.

It was the wanting that lodged in her throat, frightening and sour. She hacked on it, eyes streaming, and almost lost sight of Agnieszka’s light in the blur of it.

I— didn’t really, want that with you, Kasia wanted to protest, choking on smoke and shame, her skin crackling, her hair crisping away. I didn’t know, Nieshka—but hadn’t she? Hadn’t she always known, that her eyes followed Agnieszka’s wild hair, her bright smile. The slight curves of her calves that drew Kasia’s eyes as no man’s ever did. She’d pretended, for so long, that it was only because she knew she was promised to the Tower, but it wasn’t that. 

It never had been. 

But Agnieszka, despite it all, the perverse longing and the jealousy and the petty squalid loneliness that shone stark on Kasia’s face - she was still reaching for her, agonized, both hands desperately stretched out. Agnieszka would reach and reach into this poisonous space until she died of it, unless Kasia could reach her first. 

The flames licked at them both, but it was Kasia who began to crisp in them, to crackle. Her feet were crumbling away; she was crawling again on the stumps of her arms. It wouldn’t be a bad way to die, she knew dimly, in a place beyond screaming - she knew, if she could just make her limbs keep going, that Agnieszka would have her again. She would settle Kasia’s ashes in a cool, sweet place, with a view of the sky.

Agnieszka was crying, stinging and salt, and it hissed away from Kasia’s skin into steam. “Kasia, Kasia, Kasia,” she sobbed, and her skin was blistering under Kasia’s palms.

“Nieshka,” Kasia croaked, and, at last, believed she was here – that this was not the Wood, that these were stone walls, that she was _here_ , and her love was burning – and she shoved Nieshka weakly away.

For a time, again, she knew no more but that she continued existing: she was not dead, and she was here. But it was not green, in this hazy space where she slept – no, nothing was green here. It was all the color of Agnieszka’s eyes – golden-brown, gold, honey, catching Kasia fast like amber. 

She woke in fits and starts into a world turned strange. Things broke too easily beneath her fingers; her legs were too heavy when she tumbled out of bed with a crash. At first she was too sick to notice much of a difference, still feeling the red crumbling of her limbs into ember and ash, still seeing bark whenever she closed her eyes. Eventually, though, her body cooled, and then her mind with it – the fever had broken. She had survived, and for the first time she recognized she was in a bed, and that Nieshka was sleeping at her feet, curled up like a cat. Tangled hair, barefoot, and so thin. Oh – Nieshka, she whispered, and the name felt familiar on her heavy tongue, light despite the weight of her lips. She was too weak to move, her body not obeying her, and her voice was a bare, slurred whisper, but Agnieszka heard.

Her head shot up, and she scrambled from the bed, fumbling for water and flinging most of it on the bedclothes. Kasia managed a small smile and watched beneath heavy lashes as Agnieszka began humming distractedly, the bedclothes wringing themselves out and smelling suddenly, sweetly, of apple blossoms.

She thought she might remember Agnieszka singing to her before, too – when Kasia was still too hot to touch, and her mouth far too heavy to move. _Be well, be well, be well_ , threaded through an old lullaby. Eventually, breathing became easier, and speaking. Walking took longer.

The Dragon noticed the change in her at once, obviously, probably long before Kasia herself did. Agnieszka carefully did not notice anything, but after a time, her not-noticing became rather desperate.

But then she brushes a hank of coppery hair out of Nieshka’s eyes as she has done a hundred, a thousand times bfore, unthinking and dizzy, and leaves a harsh scrape behind. Red, red, red. 

Agnieszka flinched from her touch, frightened.

Kasia had frightened her.

Kasia recoiled backwards with a crack into the wall, and in trying to retreat, a blind animal panic, knocked over a table, falling and trying to skid backwards. Agnieszka after a moment only bounded after her, snatching at Kasia’s hand and holding the it between her two own callused palms, chafing them together until the fingers felt warm and pliant again. Kasia would have pulled her hand away, if she could have done so. Nieshka had always bruised like a peach, and if Kasia had dreamed secret, shameful dreams of leaving marks on that creamy skin once, it had never been like this. 

“Shh,” she hummed, and then brought Kasia’s fingertips, smooth and hard, to her lips. “Shh, don’t cry, oh – oh Kasia. I’m fine, don’t you know? I’ve had worse walking into branches back home, you know I have.” 

Slow tears dripped off Kasia’s chin – she wondered if they would clink when they fell to the floor, like sleet, like glass, but forgot to check because Agnieszka by then had flung herself forward and smashed their mouths together.

“Nieshka!” Kasia gasped, against the softness and blood, because of course Nieshka had busted her lip against the hardness of her mouth. She was moving too slowly again, time slipping off of her newly smoothed grip. “Oh, you—don’t—” 

She was afraid to try to blot the new wound, even to move. She was a jagged piece, a splinter that didn’t belong, tearing at the fabric of the world. It would have been better if she’d burned.

“Stop! Stop _fighting_ me. Just stay still a moment,” Agnieszka said fiercely, sleeve against her mouth, and Kasia froze for her obediently, more still than a human could manage. Then she pressed her hot coppery lips to Kasia’s cold stiff mouth. “Why did you not tell me,” she whispered after. Kasia didn’t dare breathe as Agnieszka dropped her head. Kasia’s lips still wet with her blood so that she was smearing it into her own hair as she shook head. “Don’t you know I love you?”

“Everyone loves you,” Kasia whispered back, and closed her eyes. It happened in one of those strange, broken moments – her lashes snapped shut and the world went dark. A warm dark, though, and she could smell Agnieszka’s hair beneath her nose, all fallen leaf dusty and apple-sweet. Time moved slowly for a moment, and for once, Kasia stop fighting it and let it move through her as she found the words. “And only you have ever – ever loved me.”

Her brave friend, unafraid to fall down a riverbank or out of a tree, to snag a dress or burn a pie. Agnieszka had known that to love Kasia was to lose her, and had never faltered, even long beyond when everyone else had pulled away, as though afraid to be burned.

And then Agnieszka had been gone – taken. The one thing – the _one thing_ , Kasia had been supposed to be able to do, to protect her friend from, and she’d failed her. She’d failed them all.

“I don’t care about everyone,” Nieshka scowled, and caught Kasia’s cheeks in her palms, smearing the blood and dust around even more. She tilted her head up, face smeared and determined, and Kasia knew with a sudden bright, sweet terror that Agnieszka was going to try to kiss her again.

Kasia could barely see for the slow welling tears, turning everything in the room glassy and dream-like. Nieshka was more luminous even than usual – like the dream of autumn made into a person, blown in by the wind. But Kasia has never been able to be rational about this. Nieshka has always been beautiful to her, and still was now, even though she’d begun crying in her loud honking way, nose red and running and eyes going small and swollen. Kasia loved her so much that her slow heart began beat too fast, until time felt almost normal again. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t know,” Agnieskza said fiercely, and carefully this time, pressed her mouth against the hard curve of Kasia’s lips. Kasia stretched a careful arm around her, terrified of doing further harm. It felt almost as though she should creak when she moved, like a walker, but Agnieszka curled into Kasia’s side as she’d always done. Her heart was thudding now, so loudly that Kasia was sure the Dragon, and maybe Dvernik, could hear it. “It is only that I never thought of it, I. There was so much I didn’t know - I didn’t know you were so alone, but. We’re together now. We’ll figure it out. It will be alright.”

If anyone could make it so on the strength of wanting alone, it was Agnieszka. So Kasia breathed again, slow and even, and carefully – so carefully it seems to take a season, at least, entire orchards blossoming and bearing fruit and losing their leaves – she pressed a kiss to the corner of her friend’s mouth. When that resulted in only a happy hum, Kasia nuzzled in closer with a sigh. 

Agnieszka at some point had climbed into Kasia’s lap and was all long limbs, spilling out of Kasia’s arms and tucking her head under Kasia’s chin, impossibly dear, and for the first time, Kasia thought, flexing her toes into the stone below - now I can protect her.

The Wood had meant to use Kasia against her, to hollow her out and fill her with poison and send her out into the world casting shadows. Kasia wasn’t sure what new thing she was now, what she was made of or what she could do, but she had survived the walkers, the Woods, the burning and the secrets spilled out into the light. Right now, at least for this precious moment, cradled between one disaster and the next, despite the heaviness of her skin, she feels strong. Like someone Agnieszka can lean on. Like someone made out of formless shadow and into solid light.


End file.
